{"id":853073,"date":"2026-08-12T22:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T22:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853073\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T22:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T22:42:13","slug":"australia-news-live-thousands-of-students-expected-to-walk-out-of-class-in-protest-of-one-nation-white-house-press-secretary-karoline-leavitt-to-step-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853073\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia news LIVE: Thousands of students expected to walk out of class in protest of One Nation; White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to step down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>National Party senator Bridget McKenzie has defended the gay community against remarks by a WA One Nation upper house candidate, Parminder Singh, who described homosexuality as a mental illness yesterday. <\/p>\n<p>She told Nine\u2019s Today show this morning that while she would not comment on individual One Nation members or candidates, she believed the gay community was \u201cas politically diverse as anyone\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my home state of Victoria, many are joining the National Party and the Liberal Party because they\u2019re sick of a very, very bad Labor government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cd6883b9ec682c489b9e5810a904aa54a3cb9196.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n<p>She said gay Australians were joining the National Party because they were increasingly concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism. She did not provide any evidence for this claim. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think for many in the gay community, they are joining the National Party because they, like we, are very concerned about Islamic extremism and the impact it has on their daily lives,\u201d McKenzie said. <\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said Singh\u2019s comments were \u201chighly offensive\u201d, and described his party was \u201cone of the gayest parties in Australia\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Party senator Bridget McKenzie has defended the gay community against remarks by a WA One Nation upper&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-853073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}